Head mounted displays have received considerable attention as a technique for displaying high magnification, large field of view and high definition virtual images. The head mounted display generally includes a support member for mounting the display on a head of a user and various optical and display components. The components are arranged to magnify an image displayed on a compact image display panel such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) and to display the magnified image ahead of the user through the optical system. The user typically does not directly observe an image displayed on a monitor or screen, but instead observes a magnified virtual image converted from the image displayed on the image display panel. The head mounted display thus provides a compact arrangement for displaying to the user a larger image than displayed on a small display panel.
Two current areas of development for head mounted display technology are data display for computer applications and video display for entertainment. Computer displays are typically configured to provide an image field with a 4:3 aspect ratio while video displays are typically configured to provide an image field with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Since the two technologies present different requirements for the displayed image format, two different conventional head mounted display devices are required for data display and video display.